On 8/08/2012 kuu wrote:>On 8/08/2012 dangermouth wrote:>> (snip)>>Can anyone tell me why in my 'climbers guide to the rest around Mt. Victoria'>Geoff>>Weigand is called Ralph Weigand? Did he change is name to something phonetically>>harder after 1982?>>If my memory is correct (questionable) I believe the nickname "Ralph">was used by Geoff's 'friends' as a form of put down.>
He sent a priceless letter into a mag (I think it was Screamer, Hero might remember) saying something like "Do not call me Ralph! It is not my f-in name!"
That worked. not.

On 8/08/2012 kuu wrote:>On 8/08/2012 dangermouth wrote:>> (snip)>>Can anyone tell me why in my 'climbers guide to the rest around Mt. Victoria'>Geoff>>Weigand is called Ralph Weigand? Did he change is name to something phonetically>>harder after 1982?>>If my memory is correct (questionable) I believe the nickname "Ralph">was used by Geoff's 'friends' as a form of put down.

The story i was told was that Andrew Penney started calling him ralph after ralph the mouth the character from the happy days tv show. Andrew wrote the guidebooks so he went in as ralph. There was another guy who named garry prime who went into the guidebook as A.Wanker.>

On 8/08/2012 davidn wrote:>I get that, but like rodw I was thinking more about pure sport routes>that, for example, have the first bolt at 10 metres and no opportunity>for gear inbetween. Perhaps the discussion's going a bit far afield of>the route itself - not having climbed it I don't know whether it's a real>mixed route. If it is, I tend to think of those as trad, with associated>mental adjustments for how long the runouts might be and how sparsely protected.>>It may amuse you to know that I've had the opportunity recently to place>as many bolts as I wished in my own private playground, but decided to>place none, and to ask for a strict no-bolts approach. So who knows, some>of the comments made here may even have influenced me (probably not the>nasty ones though! ;)>>Macca: I think you took my comments a bit personally. I don't actually>want anything in relation to 99.9% of climbs, if I'm honest, and have taken>every climb I meet as I met it and decided accordingly whether to hop on>it. I've rap inspected things I've climbed and attempted things at my>limit ground up (and on one occasion broken an ankle as a result). And>I did and do go out and put up climbs in the style I prefer, which has>involved 0 bolts to date. *shrug* I don't think it speaks well for your>cause to be calling me or any other climber a 'bottom feeder' (though it's>hard to take anything here as more than passing amusement) - ... more flies>with honey?

~> You are predominantly a boulderer?
;-)>>To put my thoughts another, hopefully clearer way - you might put two>bolts in a 20 metre mixed line that has some big and dangerous run-outs,>because you prefer it that way. But are you making a bold climb, or over-protecting>a climb that a better trad climber could do without any bolts? Bolts are>a slippery slope. Once you add one, the purity of your argument is immediately>lessened.

Agreed; and that is the prime argument for putting in the minimal amount of bolts required for the first ascentionist to do the route, in the style that they are intending.
~> Which automatically follows that any retro of it becomes a blasphemy...

On 8/08/2012 nmonteith wrote:>>>Just like you can't claim to have soloed a route if you wear a harness>>and carry protection and biners and do it above a safety net.>
Roped solo?
Yeah, not true solo-solo but still a form of solo nonetheless?

On 8/08/2012 gfdonc wrote:>You all forget that hand-drilling bolts back in the dark ages was hard>work. Most of the old-school I know now use a power drill, and the distance>between bolts is much less. Don't confuse boldness with laziness.>

?
What was deemed prudent for a reasonably safe first ascent in days of yore involving hand drilled bolts tended to adhere to a minimalist bolting ethic, ... and happy coincidence this also tended to align with the amount of daylight hours available at the time to complete the route etc!
~> The only laziness involved, was when rivets were used instead of carrots, and this has nothing to do with boldness, unless you want to argue that a less than perfect bolt is a bolder proposition!
☺

On 8/08/2012 climbau wrote:>If you are going to chop retrobolted mixed routes en masse, please just>check that the original gear placements are still in tact where the new>bolts are.>I have personally seen gear placements erode to the point where thay are>unusable and nothing else exists in the vicinity. Sure you could argue>that those routes then should just be climbed as is, but the nature of>climbing in the blueys is that no-one ever adjusts grades for holds dissappearing,>placements blowing out or bolts being added. once you walk the path of>modernising or demodernising then the appropriate notification has to occur.>You cannot always see the evolution from the ground. >
Isn't this just normal evolution in climbing, and with subsequent repeat ascents grades evolve accordingly? perhaps you are viewing this process over too short a time-frame?
;-)

Re aces;>(ODH).....maybe they just didn't fit your feet?> (climbau) Perhaps, I know a certain Buffalo climber or two who love them for slabbing, one even frontpoints in them. But then again they don't have a modern reference point! :)

I too know a number of Buffalo climbers some of whom are not currently active?* (*Bob Cowan ~ the front-pointer!), that love their Boreal Aces, and yes, they improve with resoling!
;-)

OK pop quiz for all you Wednesday idlers ...I'll try and keep it short but the context is required...

What would you do? (options down below)

--------------------------------------

There is a nice-ish looking line in the middle of a well known climbing area you frequent. In the middle of the wall (not the best line but OK) there is an old rusty carrot about 8m off the deck on a 40m wall. You ask around all the old timers and check all the places available for checking and can find no information on it.

So you decide to give it a crack (ground up and onsight...not from any ethical stance, just thats how everyone that you knew climbed) - the moves past the rusty bolt are pretty thin, take you a couple of shots to work out. You get that move on lead next shot, and start stretching for the top hoping to find a path up the next 30m. Initially the gear is OK but a bit spaced. At a point where the gear is a bit run out you're faced with a blind (and possibly irreversible) move over bulge or to head for a flake a bit to the left where you can see some gear...you opt to head for the flake and get in what seems a good 3 RP in solid rock at its base.

Climbing up the flake is pretty straightforward, problem is the gear after that initial 3 RP is only small RP's behind the rapidly thinning and now hollow sounding flake. The flake eventually stops and you are shaking out at the top of it psyching up to make one committing move (good RP 10ish mtrs below you by now) but after that one next move there is a good horizontal where good gear is guaranteed, and the hardish climbing looks well and truly over.

For no reason while shaking out, one foot pops, you lose balance and then do a slow motion barndoor off the wall and start whipping and ripping the string of dodgy RP's. This all happens slow enough for you to think..."i hope that one at the start of the flake holds, cos it'll be serious if it doesn't....". Thankfully it does and you end up swinging with your feet about 2 feet off the deck.

clearly you can do the climb, but the thought of plummeting 30m to the deck next time if you happened to be less lucky wasn't appealing. Anyway you decide to rap it and maybe add a bolt.

Turns out on rappell, another line is pretty obvious - if you had of committed to the blind crank over the bulge, there is a good thin seam a few feet right of the flake, that accepts loads of good small cams and wires, but that was not at all obvious on an onsight attempt. Besides the climbing looks nicer too than the looshish flake you climbed first time.

You decide it isn't fair to climb the seam without a bolt at the bulge to "direct" people to it, as your preinspection has given you a distinct advantage (and any likely repeaters *may* end up in the same situation as you were in earlier in the shitty gear flake). So you add a bolt at the bulge, as well as a back up to the rusty carrot which you planned to chop at a later date, and then add another to a direct start that made the first 8m of climbing a bit more direct.

You then do the now bolted route next shot and do all the "writing up" stuff that one does.

-----------------------------------------------------

Now getting to the point.....

A few months later you are at the crag, and a guy comes up and without introducing himself asks if your name is XXXX, you say yes, and without any attempt at conversation says that he did the route about 8 years earlier and tells you to chop the retroed bolts. He's not really interested in any discussion, and walks off making insulting remarks in a voice loud enough to be overheard, but soft enough to make it appear as if he intended the comments to be private - but of a general nature implying how fking hard he was and soft you were....

You speak to him a bit later and he is slightly more civil, and he asks if you can leave the good bolt & fixed hanger next to his shitty carrot, as well as the one in the Direct Start which he concedes makes the route a bit better.

Q1. What do you do?

A: do exactly what he asks and only chop the one bolt at the blind move at the bulge

B: Tell him to fk off and do it himself if he cares so much

C: Chop all 3 of your bolts, at least you'll get 3 fixed hangers back - deciding that you don't want anything to do with the worst route on a good wall.

You end up doing (A; B; or C) and then a few weeks later find out that not only had the route in question been rap inspected but most likely top roped before our hero of the rusty carrot made his ascent.

If you had this additional knowledge at the time, would you have changed your original answer?

On 8/08/2012 One Day Hero wrote:>>Moonarie right?>>Ooh, guessing games, my favorite! I'll have a stab at it being a route>on the great wall? Languish?>>And as to your actual question, I guess that you went with A, which is>why you're still bitter about it :)

It sort of strikes me that a line in a guidebook would have been just as effective as a bolt, e.g. "at 20m, and against your better judgement, go right through the bulge, protection will appear"..........solves it for everyone; those who read the guide will avoid the death flake, those who want the "full adventure", without reading descriptions, will get what they're looking for too.

So, C? You chucked a tanti, and chopped all your pussy retrobolts? I can't really imagine you telling an 80's Moonarie hardman to go and get fuched.

On 8/08/2012 IdratherbeclimbingM9 wrote:>On 8/08/2012 climbau wrote:>M9 wrote>Isn't this just normal evolution in climbing, and with subsequent repeat>ascents grades evolve accordingly?
You would think so, but not the case with the established 'ardmen climbing ten grades harder than the evolved routes. perhaps they fear evolution?>;-)>;-)>;-)

I have been watching this car crash of a thread and can no longer refrain from commenting.

To Macciza:

Is there any special reason for getting stuck into the re-bolting/re-bolter of this route? Over the last few years various routes in the mountains have been retro-bolted: Trad Exterminator (was all trad, now all bolts), The Plunge, On Edge etc, etc. In order to be consistent I think you should get stuck into the re-bolting/re-bolter(s) of these.

To Simey:

> The only times that the first ascenionist should really command full respect is when they have gone ground-up to establish a new route. I reckon as soon as you opt to rap-inspect a line you have started taking the soft option. If you choose to bolt a line in a bold way after pre-inspecting all the climbing and working out what placements go where, you are basically being lazy or an egotistical wanker. Personally I don't think you can claim complete ownership of the line given that you have already forfeited your opportunity to meet the cliff head-on by opting for abseil pre-inspection. In fact I hate it when great lines have been hijacked in this way.

In my view, these are the most perceptive and smartest comments on the whole thread. Take a bow. Seriously.

Some facts (as opposed to supposition or misinformation):

* The retro-bolted route is The Rage this Season, graded 23, established after top-roping and with bolts and pre-placed gear by Geoff Weigand.

* The Age of Reason (a 24 established in the same way by Warwick Baird) shares the same start then goes up more directly. This climb cannot be climbed in its present state as it is covered in run-off and lichen. No-one has done it in donkey's years.

* You will get a surprise if you think that The Rage this Season in its present state is 'sport bolted'. There are significant run-outs with the possibility of falls slamming you into the slab below you. The key gear placement is retained. I will add no more as I would not wish to give anyone unwanted beta.

* Itís one of the best routes I have ever been on in The Blue Mountains. It's a fragile climb with some very thin edges, so, unfortunately (as someone has said previously), with wear, this climb could rapidly become a 26. Please respect and minimise wear.

Nick
In particular it is of importance as the route is a known 'bold' route, warning etc. There are very few of these and should not be fcuked with on a whim . . .

At least On Edge retained some of it's 'edge' - having climbed it in it's original and rebolted forms, I don't think it changed that much from memory , apart from being perhaps slightly easier, clipping wise - but yes I was pissed by that as well - it really should have hangerless bolts . . .

Trad-Exterminator - Onsighted this in its original form several years ago, did not think it that bad or dangerous, Not sure if I knew it had been retro-spurted, but yes I agree, this should not have been allowed either, and yes probably should be reverted as well . . .

There are numerous other mixed routes that have been 'sanitised' over the years to accommodate spurt-climbers ego's and lack of appreciation for a good placement or runout . . . Shipley copped it, people complained ; Piddo copped it; York copped it; even bloody Cosmic has been dragged down - these 'ringers' seemingly have no respect or control . . .
So it is reaching that critical point of 'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH' STOP THE RETRO_BS!

Simeys comments also suggest that all the recent rap-bolted routes are 'hi-jacks' - so should they be pulled to allow us to meet the cliff on it's terms . . .
And also isn't Simey an AFL player these days? When and what was the last bold route he did? He had the best bold route in Oz in his backyard and never got on it, I did . . .

Re Your 'Facts' ;
Yes I know it is RtS and I know of its history

Not sure you are correct about AoR being established the 'same way' (from memory of conversations with Warwick) It now has a ring to clip as soon you do the first move to get onto the wall, feet about 4 foot of the ground (SPB ~ scary). Some people may be prepared to try it in it's present state, possibly cleaning as they go, even if you are not. Donkeys years? What baby donkeys maybe, try 2010?

So have you been on the route since the desecration - have you even looked at it? Those first few bolts aren't 'spurt-bolted'? You're kidding right? Stick-clipped next to gear?

Yes I agree it is an excellent route - But as you say 'PLEASE RESPECT AND MINIMISE WEAR' which roughly translates as 'DON'T RETRO_BOLT IT INTO A SPURT ROUTE'